1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention provide a system and a method for modifying operations of a contact center to meet a business requirement. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention provide a system and a method for modifying parameters of a contact center.
2. Description of Related Art
Contact centers are employed by many enterprises to service inbound and outbound contacts from customers. A typical contact center includes a switch and/or server to receive and route incoming packet-switched and/or circuit-switched contacts and one or more resources, such as human agents and automated resources (e.g., interactive voice response (IVR) units), in order to service the incoming contacts.
Contact centers distribute inbound and/or outbound contacts for servicing to any suitable resource according to predefined criteria. In many existing systems, the criteria for servicing the contact from the moment the contact center becomes aware of the contact until the contact is connected to an agent are client or operator-specifiable (i.e., programmable by the operator of the contact center) via a capability called vectoring. Normally, in present-day automatic call distribution (ACD) when the ACD system's controller detects an agent has become available to handle a contact, the controller identifies all predefined contact-handling pool for the agent, usually in some order of priority and delivers to the agent the highest-priority, oldest contact that matches the agent's highest-priority pool. Generally, the only condition that results in a contact not being delivered to an available agent is where there are no contacts waiting to be handled.
Agents are typically associated with a specific communication manager (CM) and automatic call distribution (ACD) such as contact center (CC) Elite. Further, the contact center employs both in-house agents and outsourcers. The contact center may outsource a certain percentage of calls (e.g., 10 percent) to the outsourcers due to cost reasons or language reasons. The contact center may have a specific agreement with the outsourcer. For example, the contact center will outsource 10 percent of calls to the outsourcers provided the outsourcer answers those calls within 20 seconds, and if the outsourcer does not answer those calls within 20 seconds, the contact center may punish the outsourcers by reducing the percentage of calls outsourced to the outsourcer by 3 percent.
Typically, supervisors manage key performance indicators (KPIs) such as wait time. Supervisors may manage the percentage of calls assigned to be handled by the in-house agents and by the various outsourcers. At times due to business reasons as explained above (e.g., when the outsourcer does not meet service level agreement requirement), a supervisor may need to change the percentage of calls directed to a specific outsourcer. For example, supervisors may need to reduce the percentage of calls directed to a specific outsourcer from 20 percent to 15 percent. Consequently the percentage of calls directed to other agent pools would increase. To avoid adverse impact to service level agreements (SLAs), other parameters may need to be modified to ensure that the SLA remains within proper limits. For example, agent skills or number of agents assigned to a specific region may need to be modified.
However, conventional technique of bulk changing of parameters may cause large swings in one or more KPIs and cause a specific SLA to drop below accepted threshold. This is due to that fact that the contact center is a multi-variable system with n1 inputs (e.g., specific attributes of agents, number of calls requiring specific skill set, number of agents with specific attribute, etc.) and n2 outputs (e.g., various KPIs such as average wait time, total revenue, number of calls resolving issue in first time, etc.). For example, a four dimensional system may have two KPIs wherein KPI1=f(x,y), and KPI2=f(x,y) where x and y are attributes that the supervisor can change. Presently, if the supervisor first changes x (e.g., the percentage of calls directed to a specific outsourcer) then KPI1 would improve but KPI2 may drop below threshold. Alternatively, if the supervisor first changes y (e.g., the number of agents with a specific skill) then KPI2 would improve but KPI1 may drop below threshold. Hence, neither path provides an optimal route because in either case one of the KPIs may drop below acceptable threshold. Further, the supervisor can change only one parameter at one time, causing bulk changes in the value of parameter. However, bulk change of parameters may cause large swings in specific KPI and cause a specific SLA to drop below accepted threshold.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method that is capable of modifying parameters so that none of the KPIs drop below the acceptable threshold.